


If I Could I Would Feel Nothing (Oh Wait, I Can)

by almostbeautiful



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: A vampire?, F/M, Girls bite back, Rio might?, be？
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24436951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostbeautiful/pseuds/almostbeautiful
Summary: He answers to no one and nothing except himself. Nothing, that is, except for the rules inscribed into his rotting veins against his will. Oh, and Beth Boland.
Relationships: Beth Boland & Rio, Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 26
Kudos: 330





	1. Bite Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm garbage! I don't know what this is!  
> Vampires must turn humans or else they'll forget their own lives and be entirely consumed by hunger. Turning takes a page out of The Vampire Diaries' book, so the human has to have vampire blood in their system when they die and then they have to feed on human blood when they wake to complete the turn.  
> Animal, human, and vampire blood are all okay to sustain them after that! Food and water are optional add-ons. :P

Christopher has been Christopher for...oh, a century, give or take. His last name long forgotten, memories growing grainier and ever more faded as the seconds since his unfortunate creation elapsed into minutes elapsed into decades. 

He has been Rio for the last five years, to those who know him well enough to know his name. To everyone else, he’s the kingpin to beat all kingpins. The puppeteer who could bring the city’s entire underground drug scene to its knees with a twinge of one tattooed knuckle.

He answers to no one and nothing except himself. Nothing, that is, except for the rules inscribed into his rotting veins against his will.

Eat, and if you do not eat, then become consumed by the desire until you are a mindless machine. 

If you do not doom others, then you are doomed to forget. Who you were, who you knew. Your family, your home. You know only the hunger, burning and aching and spreading until you must eat, and if you do not eat, then become consumed by the desire until you are a mindless machine. 

Christopher would have sooner starved to death than condemned someone else to this life. Rio, though, Rio has Marcus. Had.  _ Had _ Marcus - he hadn’t been allowed to see him since the day he was born, but fuck if he was ever going to allow himself to forget that squished little face. His son, his niñito [little boy]. 

So, he turned. Turned clients, turned acquaintances, turned strangers. It didn’t matter who - as soon as the memory of Marcus’ face started to get fuzzy around the edges, he forced them to take his blood, snapped their necks and gave them someone to feed on when they woke up. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, fuckers. 

He’d killed hundreds - sometimes he turned them, sometimes he just fed until the last sparkles of life drained from their eyes. 

Sometimes he cared about who they were, who might be missing them at home. Usually, he didn’t. Feelings had no place in a career like his, forget a fucking  _ life _ like his. 

Humanity was a courtesy from him, perfectly in his control and turned on and off with a flick of a switch. 

So why was he standing in the middle of Fairfield Street seconds after bullets started flying?

A drop got messy and he’d been called in to talk ‘em down, but they started shooting the second he got out of his ride. All background noise, he’d normally have just got back in his car and peeled out of there. Whoever of his crew he lost, he lost. He didn’t send the humans with coveted skills on jobs like this for a reason. 

So why? Why wouldn’t his legs move? Why was his attention locked on the stroller suddenly without a navigator, on the blonde collapsed atop the pavement beside it who was  _ really  _ in the wrong place at a hella wrong time? 

On the delicate curve of her fingers as they clung to the blood-soaked fabric of the coat that covered her stomach?

On her eyes? Blue, impossibly blue. Every single shade of blue he’d learned in the last century flitted through his head - he settled on cerulean. 

Staring right at him, cerulean locked with bronze as those familiar sparkles began to fade.

He’d killed hundreds. But the crying coming from that carriage was making his head hurt, those damn eyes obscured ever so slightly by wispy bangs making his stomach turn.

God damn it. 

Pocket knife to his wrist, she was drinking his blood before he had time to reconsider. The last glimmers of her human life faded to blankness and her eyelids fluttered shut, but he knew they wouldn’t stay that way. 

She would wake up, and she would wake up hungry.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Spotify playlist that spurned this first tidbit of a chapter (and the title): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7ofP4CXxQEtixGNLlqqLct?si=ngXP_qTRSZCVGst0xTDPiw
> 
> And the Pinterest board: https://pin.it/2rTXW5r
> 
> (I'm a visual and auditory learner, what can I say)  
> (Also, catch me crying to Dancing With Your Ghost the entire time I was writing the last half of this)


	2. Please Don't Bite

When you’ve lived through enough shit to constitute not just one life but multiple (hello smallpox and yellow fever and the black plague and scarlet fever and other diseases named after colors), not much comes as a surprise or qualifies as  _ new _ information. 

The baby staring discontentedly up at him, though? That was new, as was the still unconscious blonde sprawled across his Loro Piana velvet couch who was drooling even more than the damn  _ baby _ . Paid $4000 at a discount for that couch. 

He’d had to find a human for her on short notice. Lucky for him, there was the perfectly good body of his perfectly stupid ex-employee right beside his car. Everyone else had peeled out when shots started flying, leaving him and his driver (Adriano, sweet guy) to load the car up with two bodies and a still crying baby in a stroller turned car seat.

(Not that he needed the help to lift them, but it made Adriano feel included). 

Baby bounced as tenderly as he was capable of getting with one arm, he searched through Backseat Blonde’s purse with the other. 

Elizabeth Boland, born in 1985. Had some older cards that said Elizabeth Marks, so, probably married. No ring, but her husband might’ve been a cheap fuck. Sure complicated things a bit, huh? He’d have to keep an ear to his scanner and see if there was any noise about a missing person. 

With any luck, she’d wake up in a couple hours and he could compel her to shoot him a reassuring lil’ text.

They got back to his place, unloaded, loaded her onto his couch and Paolera onto his living room floor (the aforementioned human) and set the baby up with some old blankets and more bouncing. 

Was gonna need a bath and a new diaper too, because...well, the little guy had a couple flecks of blood on him. Took every new turn at  _ least _ two hours to fully heal and come back to their bodies, so, they had some downtime. 

“C’mon, little man. Ain’t even gonna help me out a little bit?” The words came out mostly under his breath, shirt now soaked in bath water and chubby baby legs continuing to kick more of it in his direction. 

So, that was a clear no to his very fair question. 

Diaper had come off with only minimal struggle (yeah maybe he used scissors to cut the sides, but so what?) and he was clean, but seemingly wanted to turn the sink he was taking a bath in into a swimming pool. 

Tried to drain the water, he started crying. Tried to lift him out of the water, he started crying. Was laughing real hard while he was kicking that water at him, though. 

Rio finally lifted him out, dried him off, and had just finished figuring out how the damn Velcro straps on the new diaper worked when - “Put. The baby. Down.” Ah, shit. Mama Bear was up.   
  
  


The words came out more like a growl than actual words, Rio slowly turning with one eyebrow arched and the aforementioned baby held under the armpits and happily kicking the shit out of the air around him. 

He hadn’t heard her get up, hadn’t heard her feed, but sure as fuck there was Paolera, lifeless and grey at her feet. Blood still dripped from her chin (why were the new kids always such messy eaters?), pupils blown, breathing ragged. 

He looked at her, then at Paolera’s body, then the baby. Didn’t exactly have anywhere in the bathroom to put little man that he couldn’t roll off of, and he wasn’t about to hand him to his blood soaked mama. 

So, Rio pulled a move that she didn’t know how to pull yet. 

In a barely perceptible blur of movement he was back in the living room, baby safely tucked among the new blankets filling his carriage. He turned back to the doorway of the bathroom, hands up and fingers lacing together behind his head. 

This time, bronze locked with black. Ah,  _ now _ he’d gone and pissed her off. 

He couldn’t help the hiss that escaped at the far too familiar feeling of fangs slicing through flesh, his own blood bubbling to the surface - for a new kid, she knew how to move pretty damn smoothly. Had to know that he smelled different to a human, tasted different - he figured she was too pissed to care. 

Think about it like this. Blood from other vampires was like flat soda. A little iffy, but you could deal if you were real thirsty. Blood from animals was like black coffee. Soothed your scratchy throat at first, but left you thirstier in the end. Not everybody could even tolerate drinking it, and the ones that  _ preferred  _ it kinda got side-eyed.    
Blood from humans? Like a glass of ice water after a week of walking through the damn desert. 

She’d just fucked herself over, but she ain’t know that yet.   
  
  


He pushed her back hard enough to send up a puff of drywall dust, her shoulder blade leaving a big old crack in the wall. Ugh, new turns. So destructive. 

With an eerie pop of her shoulder and a blur of motion she had him up against the far wall, her grip of his wrists iron and her teeth bared. Well, she figured out how to do that trick he’d so helpfully demonstrated damn fast. “Better to quit while you’re ahead, mama” came his soft tsk of warning, but she wasn’t listening, too busy turning his neck into her own personal Capri Sun. 

See, there was a catch to drinking blood from another vampire. 

It filled you up for a bit, sure, but while your dinner’s blood was in your system, they could convince you to do whatever, whenever (see: compelling). Meaning that the more she drank, the longer he’d have control. Was normally a real touchy thing, something you didn’t do unless you  _ really  _ trusted that the person you drank from wasn’t gonna take advantage. Needed to trust that the person drinking wasn’t gonna drain you, too - it wouldn’t kill him, but it’d knock him low for a day or two, and he didn’t have the time or the patience for that shit. 

So he pushed again, harder this time. Just enough to get space between them, to lock his eyes with hers and _ damn _ she really made a mess of his favorite shirt. 

Lights, camera, action. 

“Elizabeth.” It slipped out of him in a purr, corner of his lip ticking up into a smile that all but dripped with charm. He could see the very second she registered her name, could feel the shift in her body as black receded to reveal those damned baby blues. “S’alright if you’re still thirsty, hmm?” He was closer now, close enough to touch.  
  
His knuckle tilting her chin up, his thumb wiping away a dribble of blood oh so tenderly, like one might ghost fingers across a bruise. “But from now on, you drink from the fridge.” The same knuckle angled her head in the direction of the kitchen where he did, in fact, have two fridges, but that was a story for later. Head angled back to him, his tilting slightly to the side while his eyes narrowed. “N’ I want you to text whoever you live with, tell them you and lil’ man are gonna be home late. You understand me?” A nod, a breath, and he let the reigns go lax. 

She visibly stiffened as he stepped back, as she got control of herself again. From her coat pocket appeared a phone, and he didn’t need to peep over her shoulder to know she was sending exactly what he asked. Bloodied hands back in her coat pockets, and she looked past him, to the carriage.

He had a hand flat to her chest before she even moved, head shaking ever so slightly. “Not a good idea. Not while you’re hungry. Lil’ man’s alright, he got a bath and a new diaper.”

Her nod was almost dejected, curls falling into her eyes as she set her sights on the kitchen.

Rio padded behind, ears trained on the little guy while he watched Elizabeth walk right past the food fridge (for guests) and tug open the doors of his blood bag fridge (for himself and...well, just himself, usually). That was a point for her nose working, at least. 

She’d be disgusted by all this in a little bit, he knew. Just her coat alone screamed ‘uppity’ - but when you’re new, doesn’t matter who you are or who you know. All that matters is getting rid of the burning twinge in your throat, so strong it makes your fucking teeth ache. 

Bag in hand, she nudged the doors closed. Looked at the bag, looked at him. Looked at her coat, and just now seemed to register that it was, y’know, covered in blood.

Bye bye went the coat, tossed onto the nearby counter once she shrugged out of it. Then- then she did the most tender thing Rio had ever seen a newbie do. Not even just a newbie, but  _ any _ vamp. Her pupils expanded into inky voids for just long enough that one fang punctured the bag, slender fingers reaching for a straw from the cup full of bendy straws sitting on the counter. Back when he first got the news that Marcus was gonna exist in nine months (before he knew he wouldn’t be  _ seeing _ the kid), he picked up a pack. Babies like bright stuff, stuff they can shove in their mouth, and stuff that they can bend and move. Perfect fit. 

He zoned back in from thoughts of Marcus to find that the bendy straw was now in the blood bag, bendy part molded to resemble the same spirals that framed her face. 

One long draw, then another, Elizabeth slowly settling into one of the chairs that surrounded the island in the middle of the kitchen. 

He chose the seat one away from hers, chin resting in his hand while he waited. What exactly he was waiting for, he couldn’t tell you. Maybe a reassurance that she wasn’t about to fling herself into the waning evening sun and leave him with a nameless baby. 

Speaking of, she was due for a ring. He slid his own off his middle finger, facets sparkling under the kitchen lights as it bridged the gap between them. “I’ll work on getting you somethin’ that actually fits, but this’ll do for now. Keeps you from getting crispy in the sun.” Crispy didn’t even begin to cover what the sun did to their kind before protection took the form of jewelry, but he was hoping she’d never have to find that out.   
  
She was just about to the bottom of the bag when she spoke, though her eyes stayed firmly fixed to the straw bobbing up and down amidst the remaining blood. "His name is Kenny." Now her eyes darted to meet his own, then right back to the straw. "The baby. Kenny, and his dad is Dean." A pause, a breath escaping in a bluster of air as she turned on her stool to face him. "Now, tell me where I am and what the hell happened to me before I cram this ring down your throat. You understand me?"  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that I keep starting fics and then dying. Cluster headaches are really out here ruining my summer and shitting all over my writing ambitions. 
> 
> I commissioned this piece of turned Beth to help me better visualize her while I wrote this chapter and I'm OBSESSED: https://almostbeautifulbovarist.tumblr.com/post/619847801585696768/cacodactyl-commission-time-this-is-a-vampiric
> 
> Rio's daylight ring: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/47/e6/8d/47e68d6712e73329bf701752cdd090e9.jpg


End file.
